Relegation: good thing or bad thing?

There seems to be a distinct divide on this subject between ourselves & our esteemed Australian cousins. The Super League has it, the NRL doesn't; the Premier League has it, the A League doesn't; the Zurich Premiership has it, Super 14 doesn't; our County Championship has it, the Pura Cup doesn't (although with only 6 states that's perhaps more understandable!) &, obviously, the AFL is ring-fenced too.

I'm interested to know whether people think relegation is healthy for a sport or if the ring-fencing of the top echelon in any sport improves quality? To take League as an example, there's little doubt that the overall quality of the NRL is higher than the ESL, but with it being franchise-based great old names like North Sydney & Western Suburbs have no immediate prospect of a return to the top flight. When the Super League was first proposed over here there was talk of merging several clubs, which the fans violently opposed, even if it meant their club being out of the ESL (Widnes & Hull KR both missed out).

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has its merits, i think the main thing is how many teams that have the ablity to get to a similar standard make it work, the populations in Europe make it a whole lot easier than having the system in place for Australian sports.

Look at the poor bugger that bought West Ham. If they go down he has just blown a fortune.

As with any unpredictable environment it encourages short term fixes, leads to risky, gambling strategies and lack of long term planning.

Also, a fixed group of teams makes fairer revenue sharing easier to organise and should enable moves towards parity and a better league.

Very good point.

However, I'm for it on the grounds of quality control, and on the grounds that I just don't think fans would continue watching their team in such numbers if they had no prospects of ever proceeding up the divisions. Dreaming about the future is part of what makes supporting a small club worthwhile.

It all depends on the system that's in place and largely about money. To take Brumby's league example, because it's what I know the best, the promoted teams tend to struggle. Not because they aren't good enough, but because of the system in place. The salary cap for National League sides is huge, which means that, due to playoffs used to decide the promoted side, the promoted team cannot make signings for the next season until October, when their future rival teams get a two month headstart to shop around and such. Additionally, with the lower income for clubs outside of Super League, clubs have complained they cannot often afford to run themselves in a manner befitting a top flight club and have little time to adapt their setup upon promotion. If they could come up with a system were the promoted teams are equipped to be competitive, it would be great, but instead Super League is dumping promotion/relegation in 2009.

However, relegation makes for heightened interest and excitement. I really like how the threat of relegation keeps teams looking over their shoulder.

Oh, and Brumby, it IS NOT the ESL. It has never been the ESL. And it really pisses me off that people call it that. Infact, it's the Super League (Europe), so if anything, it should be abbreviated to SLE, no?

I wish the A-League had regulation, so we could get rid of NZ TBH. But it really depends on how many teams you have in the comp. The problem with NRL and AFL having regulation is most of the teams are from Sydney and Melbourne respectivity. To have regulation you would have to have another 16 teams and to start up teams in places like Darwin and or more teams in non home states (i can't think of better word/phase) would not be financially viable.

If you had 30 odd professional sides in those leagues then you could have promotion and regulation, but that isn't the case and will probably never be. Also i think Simon mentioned in another thread Australian fans only support winning teams. If a team got regulated most fans will leave them and support another team or stop supporting the sport.

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I'd agree with that last part, but that's because there's no history behind the teams if that's the case. As opposed to English sports, where you were born into a sporting team, as such, and have always supported them. Australians may well be similar to that if they had've been born into it, and it would be too hard to "manufacture" if the wheels were put into motion now.

There just aren't enough teams in Australian sports to have relegation. The only sport in the near future (I'm talking 20-30 years) would be the NRL or AFL, but they'd have to have a lot more teams...If Australian cricket set up a club/franchise competition there would definitely have to be relegation leagues. However, the state format at present is so successful I doubt that will ever happen.

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Another thing that would prevent it is the physical size of Australia. It becomes very hard for sides in a "lower division" to travel across the country if it were to remain a truly national competition. Therefore, you end up with competition structure much like in cricket: